


Something Missing

by Vituperative_cupcakes



Category: Doctor Who, The Mighty Boosh (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-25
Updated: 2014-10-14
Packaged: 2018-02-18 19:02:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2358884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vituperative_cupcakes/pseuds/Vituperative_cupcakes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Howard Moon feels like something is wrong. Which is weird because everything looks normal to him, nothing's changed that he can remember. He lives alone, he works alone, he's always been alone.</p><p>...hasn't he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Howard Moon spent the day managing the Nabootique, as usual. He broke for naan and a simple curry at noon, like he always did. And when closing time rolled around, he locked the doors and shuttered the windows and set off home alone. Like he always did.

And, as had become habit with him lately, he checked behind him for the first few steps.

He couldn't quite explain why. It was a general feeling of unease, of something lacking, rather than something that should not be. It's not like there was anything, anyway. No trail in the snow with too many prints, no steps echoing his own, no extra shadow. Howard smoothed the hair in his mustache, which had begun to bristle, with his knuckle and crunched home.

He heated up a risotto and selected a Charlie Parker to queue up and settled in for another perfect evening. Let it be said that Howard's existence was meagre, yes, but let it never be said that it was poor. Work was enough of a distraction from writing(400 pages into his novel, _The Sands of Time of Life...of EVIL_ and counting) and writing was a distraction from work. He never went near Shoreditch and he never went to clubs and he chuffed along like a tweedy engine on the tracks of prosperity.

As he watched television, he glanced at the seat beside him occasionally. He couldn't stop himself from it, though there was never anything there.

Howard nodded off to a documentary on the greater spruce-boring beetle and fell into the murky waters of sleep. Sleep was oddly unsatisfactory lately, Howard never remembered his dreams or why he should find it so. He was doing something in tonight's dream cinema, but it was full of blanks. He was driving to a zoo, listening to [        ]'s music. [       ] had only brought candy, so Howard kicked [        ] out of the van. He found a box and fell into it and found [        ] again. One dream bled into another and now [        ] and he were on an island, [        ] was eating a strange green fruit with a face, one eye marked by a polo mint. Howard tried to scream and [        ] turned into a coconut. Howard felt a pinch on his scalp, reached up, and found a coconut shell. No matter how he tugged, it was clamped too tightly to his skull. [        ] teleported before him, now aged and warty, proffering a pair of tights for Howard to skip through the bracken. Howard wrenched away, tugging futilely at the coconut skullcap, which refused to be displaced. [        ] tried to pull his hands away, pointing at an oncoming train with the face of the moon, babbling docile nonsense.

Howard fell off the sofa, flailing. The pain persisted.

In the kitchen Howard chased the paracetamol with slightly fermented kia-ora and rested his forehead to the cool of the butter door. The headaches were a depressing occurrence, one he still had yet to broach to his surly landlord(who was still sore about the shelf brackets). He decided to get his six-stringer and strum. Improvising always chased away the pain.

But when he groped and grasped down the side of his bed for the guitar, he came up with a scrap of fabric that was like a one-two punch to the gut. It was some ungodly zebra stripe, made with turquoise and tinsel. It looked like something a tween would paste to her schoolbooks, not something a grown man would posses. So why did he have it? And why wouldn't his left eye stop watering? And why couldn't he move his arms as he pitched forward, eyes squinching shut, white-hot pain lancing through his skull–

—WARDHOWARDHOWARDHOWARDHOWARDHOW—

He came to all a-tremble, screen given over to static, teary-eyed. He groped blindly for the table, hoisting himself up on one weary elbow. Yes, he would go see the doctor. It was probably nothing. The doctor.

In a day or two.

He waited the counter the next day, bilious and not at all well, too sick to tolerate people and too stubborn to retire. He could barely chew down the irritation as glitzy twats graced the shop with their nasal accents, looking oddly surprised and disappointed that nothing grander than Howard lay in wait for them. Howard wasn't sure what they expected. Certainly nothing trendier here than the monkey-mermaid in a jar by the register.

Howard filled out a receipt and tried not to look at the moon rising in the east.

The feeling that something was wrong had pervaded his adult life the moment he stepped out of school. But this, this abrupt _wrongness_ , this feeling of displacement, where had it come from? He had settled into a niche, yes, a little lower than his childhood imaginings. And maybe he didn't get the respect an artiste was due. And maybe his landlord made too many jokes at his expense. And maybe he saw the latest headliner at the Velvet Onion and his throat ached with combined longing and jealousy. But he was Howard Moon, free to come and go as he pleased, free to practice trombone til all hours of the night(provided Naboo was off having it large) and dressed how he pleased and watch what he pleased without someone telling him how boring—

A tear. Two tears. Howard felt his left eye, but it seemed to be done.

He decided to go up to the roof, let the cool air clear his mind.

No sooner had the door swung closed and Howard taken a calming draught of breath than he noticed a snappily-dressed stranger poking and prodding around.

“Oh,” Howard said, “sorry, I didn't know anyone else was up here.” apologizing, as if he'd been the one who was in the wrong. As if anyone else lived in the building.

The stranger snapped to attention, toothy grin momentarily invading his face. A fine batwing knot tied off the collar of the shirt. Howard nodded loftily, tipping his hat.

“Nice bowtie,” Howard said.

The stranger blinked.

“Nice porkpie,” The stranger said after frozen moments.

Howard felt he had made a connection comfortable enough that he probably wasn't going to be unceremoniously stabbed. He took a seat on a heating vent and blew into his hands, gazing out over the tops of buildings. He snuck a sidelong look at the stranger who, yes, was still staring at him with a fixed attention. Howard bore all he could bear and then finally sighed.

“Moon.”

“Yes, it is quite lovely tonight,” the strange said, adjusting a fez. He had something in his hand. Howard had clocked it when he'd first come up: not a switchblade, maybe a laser pointer. He held it up and a strange metallic chittering occurred as he passed it over objects.

“No, that's me. Moon. Howard Moon.”

“Ah,” the stranger said, paying more attention to the bit of pigeon leavings on the brick before him, “Nice to meet you Moonhowardmoon.”

Howard rolled his eyes.

The stranger seemed distracted. He was looking through and beneath things, rapping bricks as if expecting them to be hollow.

“Tell me, Moon,” the stranger said, looking up over the ancient weather vane, “how long have you lived here?”

Howard ruffled his mustache. “Few years. Actually I—”

Howard meant to tell the stranger an amusing anecdote about living in a zoo run by a crazed hunter and an infant, but white lanced through his head again, searing all thought away and replacing it with a metallic whine.

—WARDHOWARDHOWARDHOWARDHOWARDHOW—

Howard came back to himself gradually. First he thought: _knees. I have knees._ Then he thought: _I have knees and they hurt._ Then he thought: _I hope whoever's pissed in my skull has gone_. Then: _this bloke holding me seems nice, I hope he'll have the good grace not to mention that someone's pissed in my skull._

The stranger had his odd device out and was passing it over Howard's skull, bathing him in green light.

“And tell me, moonhowardmoon,” he said, “how long have you been getting these headaches?”


	2. Chapter 2

Howard moon gripped a hot mug of Ceylon and sneezed.

“Careful, careful, I’ve only just got this the right way.”

The stranger was balancing two forks atop a tower of army figurines, with a tape base buttressed by toy dinosaurs. Howard gestured to it with his tea.

“What's that, some sort of antenna?”

“No, I’ve just always wanted to build one of these.” He giggled. “You actually have t _he Bay City Rollers_ on Stereo 8? Didn't think there were any left in existence.”

“Yeah, if there was justice in this world there wouldn't be.” Howard stared morosely into his cup. “You think it's a tumor, or...an aneurysm or something like that?”

“Hmm?” the stranger glanced up. “I’m not that kind of doctor.”

Howard rose, shedding his blanket like a landslide. “WHAT? You couldn't have told me that before I let you—”

“Ahhhh,” the Doctor held up his hands. “I’m not a _medical_ doctor, but I am the kind of doctor that you need at the moment. Have you always lived alone?”

The sudden question threw him off. “Y-yes,” he stammered. “will you–”

“I’m so pleased you showed me around this place, so pleased.” the Doctor fidgeted with a little plastic robot. “Do you normally make dinner for two, Howard?”

Howard was getting in one of his moods. “Look you batty crease, I’m—”

“It's just I’ve noticed that even though you weren't expecting me, there's two places set at the table.”

Howard blinked. So there was.

It was a funny little quirk, come to think of it. Like biting your nails. Before you could stop yourself, you had your cuticle in your mouth. Mismatched silverware and a little plastic cup covered in cartoon monsters. More like a child's setting than anything else.

The Doctor was scanning things with that buzzy instrument. Probably hopped up on ash or crash or MGMT or whatever trendy drug the kids were snorting now.

“It's funny,” the Doctor continued casually, “this is a lot of flat for one man. And there are two bedrooms. Mind if I take a look?”

Howard was dizzy as if spun. All the questions were crowding his head. He bobbed along like a cork in the wake of the Doctor as he marched brusquely to the spare room and flung open the door—

Howard peered around him. “Just as I left it. Never did get around to doing anything with it.”

The Doctor was looking up and down the bare white walls, the bare floors. His voice reverberated in the space.

“You've never even touched this room?”

“No, not since moving in.” Howard peer around. “Actually, don't like coming in here. It's so bare and sad it makes me feel kind of—”

“Lonely?”

Howard looked up. The Doctor was peering at him with an almost hungry expression. Howard nodded.

“It's funny really,” the Doctor said, “you've never used this room for storage? Or your landlord?”'

Howard shook his head.

The Doctor held up a finger. “I’ve got an experiment.”

He pushed past Howard into the hall, and came back with a tuba. “What if I were to just put this right here...”

“NO!” Howard took a moment to realize that he himself had shouted. The cup was no longer in his hand, Howard found it was now on the floor in pieces because he had thrown it. The Doctor looked slightly shocked at his outburst, but not surprised.

“...that,” he said, laying the tuba on its side, “is very interesting. There's nothing in this room, nothing at all, but you’re keeping it pristine. Because....?”

Howard opened and closed his mugless hand, looking around. Seeing the room empty made him so sad. So why didn't he want to put anything in it?

...because. Because it was waiting

—WARDHOWARDHOWARDHOWARDHOWARDHOW—

He opened his eyes and the Doctor was hovering before his face at an odd angle.

“Are you flying?” he managed.

“No, mate.” He grabbed Howard's arm. “You're on the ground.”

With a heft, he helped Howard right himself.

“I came here,” the Doctor said, “because– _oof_ , there's a lad–because there's anomalies in the area.”

“Anomalies?”

“Oddities. Idiosyncrasies. And just all-around weirdness.”

“Well, it _is_ Dalston.”

“You know the moon...speaks?”

Howard stared silently. “You've seen it too?” he whispered.

The Doctor smiled. “You think you're crazy. And anywhere else, you'd be right. But this is a special place.”

The affirmation that he was not, in fact, crazy, was very soothing. But something niggled at him when the Doctor called this place special. Howard had always thought so, in the back of his mind. So special, in fact, it always seemed like a mistake. Like such a life was reserved for someone else. Someone not...boring.

“Now, none of that.” the Doctor plucked at his sleeve.

“I wasn't doing anything,” Howard said irritably.

“You were tilting. Besides, I don't think I've got it in me to pick you up again.” the Doctor paused. “I’m not sure of the best way to tell you this Howard, but you're a very special man.”

The silence was magnificently awkward.

“Thank you?”

“No, not like that.” the Doctor laughed and slapped his back. “I’m not chatting you up. I'm saying you live here for a reason. Nowhere else could all of this happen. You are an Important Person, Howard. A fixture of history.”

Howard had to puff up a little, even though it came from the ravings of a stark loony, the compliment was welcome.

“I do a bit of noodling about with greatness from time to time,” he said with affected modesty. The Doctor laughed.

“Good god, not like that either! How should I put this...” he tapped his chin. “this place...this place is you. And you are it. One cannot exist without the other. You're the Red King in nightcap, dreaming of Alice.”

Howard blinked. “This is a dream?” his voice was unsteady.

“Not quite. It's not what you'd call a...'real' reality at all. More an abbreviation really. You dream what you need, nothing more. Quick, think of a Shinto ceremony in Brazil!” the Doctor pointed at him.

Howard, on the spot, stammered meaningless syllables.

“See? You don't know it because you don't need it. But the only five jazz musicians to break the two-minute record on playing a high C–”

“Jimmy Marbles, Ramblin' Blind Willie, Blind Ramblin' Willie, The Halifax Kid, and Shrimp-Cocktail Johnson,” Howard said in one breath, “it would've been six but a minute and a half into his solo, Jakob “George Lucas” Fromme burst blood vessels in both his eyes and lost all bladder contr—”

The Doctor snapped. “That's what I mean. You have a very rich history here, Moon. But something's gone off. Do you feel it? I know you do.”

Howard tightened the blanket around his shoulders.

“Why don't you want to talk about it?”

Howard looked at the floor. “Don't know. Feels weird. Feels...wrong.”

The Doctor cocked his head. It was odd. The man was undoubtedly three bricks shy of a load, but he had such a professional sympathetic manner Howard couldn't help but trust him on some level.

“I have a theory,” the Doctor said. “you live here. You've always lived here. But you haven't always lived alone.”

There are phrases, seemingly benign phrases, phrases like “what's that smell?” or “how long has the door been open?” that bring up things you didn't even notice until it was said, things you probably should have noticed well before anyone else did.

Howard said “oh” and fainted.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, not all the chapters are going to end with Howard fainting. just most of them. ;P


	3. Chapter 3

Howard was being slapped gently awake.

“Now, you're going to have to stop that if we're to get anything done today,” the Doctor said.

Howard stared balefully up from his post on the floor.

“Come on, Howard.”

And it hurt, because it felt like he had heard that phrase so many times _but he couldn't remember a single instance_.

“You get out of my flat,” Howard said when he found his voice.

“I know it hurts, but you're going to have to push through it—”

“Get the fuck out.” Howard didn't often resort to effin' and jeffin', but when he did it usually had more impact than this. The Doctor smiled wryly.

“You can't deny you haven't felt right lately Howard. Something missing. Something special. Something that meant the world—”

“I don't want to hear another word.”

“—because it was half the whole world, which was everything to you because you never even noticed the half you contributed—”

“Get out or I’ll...” what? Naboo was gone for some shaman holiday(something to do with the equinox, or just another excuse to drink) and Howard didn't think he could leave the floor without his head cracking open like a coconut.

“—and now you've forgot and you feel guilty you've forgot but you haven't really forgot and can't remember and it hurts not to remember but you still remember a bit and remembering hurts too and you feel guilty that it hurts but you don't know why except maybe you do on a level and that's why you forgot in the first place.”

Howard stared up like a fish on a hot sidewalk.

“Well,” he tried. “that's...”

“How about some tea?” The Doctor clapped, shooting double finger-guns at Howard. “we'll need all the brainpower we can get. One lump or two?” He power-walked to the next room, not waiting for Howard's reply.

“I’ll just wait here, shall I?” he called from the floor.

 

The Doctor was drawing with a felt-tip marker on a whiteboard kindly provided by his host.

“It's like this,” he began, “this bit here is time.”

Howard squinted. “Which, the fuzzy pickle shape or the lopsided doughnut?”

“This, the whole mess.” the Doctor underlined the scribble for emphasis. “But occasionally–something breaks.” He streaked his finger across, making a jagged white crack in the middle of it. “It's not exactly like a crack in the floor, nothing like it at all really, but it's the closest analogue your mind can come up with, it's more like an–”

“—emptiness,” Howard said tonelessly, staring at the board. “or just a wide swath of nothing, like something out of focus and clear as a bell at the same time.” _Something a curious individual just might want to stick his foolish head into._..

Howard blotted a tear.

The Doctor smiled, but his eyes didn't. “Oh lovely, so you've already seen it. Well this–this _person_ , the missing piece to our puzzle, fell into that crack. And the crack ate all of them, all their past, all their possibilities, all that there was.”

It was hard to speak. “Not all,” Howard croaked. “there are bits, here and there. Little things.”

The Doctor snapped. “A-ha!”

He closed the distance to Howard's chair. “Then their hold on the world was too strong! You're cracking from the strain, but you're still sustaining it, otherwise this place would have puffed away like a dandelion clock. That means he may still be able to get claw-hold back in this reality.”

Howard shrugged helplessly. “How?”

The Doctor spun round on his toe like a ballet dancer, pointing at Howard. “That was exactly what I was thinking. I may have to go in there and do some emergency extraction, but I’ll need help.”

Howard swallowed around the lump in his throat. The dishes settled in the sink beneath a healthy layer of scum. Last week's laundry sat tall as a man on the sofa. The kitchen shutter still hung askew because Howard hadn't gone and shelled out the very moderate amount for the part to fix it.

“That's lovely of you to say,” he said finally, “but I’m really too old to go adventuring.”

And he really wasn't old, he knew, it wasn't a matter of years. It was a matter of being...ness. There wasn't enough of him _here_ to go adventuring. He knew, on some level he couldn't put into concrete thought, that if he left now he would never come back.

The Doctor's face fell. There was the pout of a disappointed little boy and something beneath that, something terribly old and sorrowful and hungry. Howard felt he could relate.

Then suddenly, the Doctor snapped back to form.

“Of course!” he cried, “you are the anchor! You need to remain here, and call it back.”

Howard, past all his bluster, had never really felt capable of anything. Now this mad stranger was asking something great from him, he knew, even if it didn't make sense.

“I don't know if I can.”

“Can? What can? There is no _can_ or _cannot_ now, Howard, this isn't a question of ability, though I know your own estimate of yours flags quite a bit compared to reality. This is in you the same as your DNA. You _are_ going to call it back.” The Doctor pointed at him. “And _I_ am going to help.”

“Why do you care?” Howard asked, because he had to.

The Doctor cocked his head.

“...do you know what I saw when I first set foot here?” he finally said.

Howard shrugged.

“A mural made out of bus tickets. A man with a cube for a head. A bouncy castle the size of an actual castle! I haven't seen that since...ever!” The Doctor licked his lips, leaning on a chair back. “Everywhere you go, everything here is teeming with life. You're like those invertebrate colonies that form around underwater volcanoes, or that species of beetle that lives entirely on the back of one elephant. This—” he staggered back and flung out his arms to encompass the room, “—is a preserve. It's the last remnant of something, I have no idea what, that cannot be found anywhere else in the cosmos.” He dropped his arms. “ _That_ is why I help. You're weird. You're weird and I love it.”

Howard realized he had stood and sat meekly again.

“What do I do?”

The Doctor approached, eyes feverish. Like Michelangelo’s _Creation of Adam_ , his fingertip graced Howard's huge noggin.

“Remember,” he whispered.

 


	4. Chapter 4

Howard sat with the blanket around his shoulders, eyes shut, feeling a complete tool. The stranger had dashed off, shouting last-minute instructions. Probably back up to the roof to steal the antenna. He was a fool. He was a fool with a sore head and a smarting knee where he'd caught himself in the first faint and an eye that dripped tears like poison.

And he had no friends. He'd never had any friends because he had never given anyone reason enough to want it.

Howard rolled his neck. _Ooh_ yeah. _There_ was the recreational self-loathing. Like poking a sore on a lip, painful, but so dismally satisfying.

It was funny. The less he tried to think about anything concerning the stranger and his crazy theories, the more the whiteness in his head went away. It was almost soothing, the cessation of noise. Like sitting in a lukewarm tub, too warm to want to get out, but too cold to encourage movement. He could probably stay like this for hours. Maybe even days.

Howard immediately thought hard about the little scrape of fabric. The empty room. The way he got soppy over satsumas occasionally.

The whine started.

He had been a fan of dissonant music since he was old enough to chew records, did it really think it was going to best him—

—WARDHOWARDHOWARDHOWARDHOWARDHOW—

Howard had to clench everything to keep from vomiting. The metallic whine had doubled in strength, and now had a smell component. It smelled dry and hot and somehow sick, like a penny held in hand too long or an old boiler. Howard cried, sobbed as well as dripping tears, and fell to his knees.

Remember. He had to remember.

“Remember bloody what?” he cried plaintively. It was trying to describe a thing using itself. Words. He didn't have the words, his mind was in a crimp—

_Crimp_.

Calming llamas, the prince of soup, Jean-Claude Jaquetti.

Howard cried. He _knew_ them. He remembered them.

Naboo had been there for one. Naboo. And Bollo. It had existed independent of him and [       ], so it hadn't gone down the tube with all the others. Ha! And it led to other things. Double ha!

The zoo. The van. The hitcher. The island. The yeti. A boxing match against a kangaroo. The death of his idol in a bizarre grater-related manner. A kiss. His kiss. His very first kiss.

Howard touched his mouth.

Being friends. Howard was not a good friend, he could admit that. He was a little bit too selfish, a little too insensitive, and too afraid. But it had been okay. It had all been okay because [        ] had been the same way, and if someone else did it that made it alright. He wasn’t alone. He had always been alone without [        ], but it was okay because [        ] always came back to him. Always.

The whine had changed pitch, gotten teeth. Howard stood, leaning into a wind that wasn't really there. His eyes jammed shut and white-hot flurries danced behind their lids.

A name. If he could just have a name, the rest would come so easy.

Come on, think! _If I were Howard's friend, what name would I have?_

Something artsy. Something that complimented Howard's own nom de plume.

V.

Where had he gotten V? It sounded right, though, didn't it? V for victory. V for vicarious.

V for Van Gogh,for the painting someone had hung on the back of Howard's door, because it was the only one that represented the night sky as it really was, pinwheeling with color and light and so so alive.

V for Vincent.

No.

Vince.

Howard cried out, a great, sucking gasp for air.

_Vince_ , he sobbed in his head. Vince the cockney bitch. The ragamuffin. Vince the insolent bastard who pretended not to notice when Howard was sad but always found a way to distract him from it. Vince who had moved in with very little prompting after school. Vince who had been the complimentary color to Howard's dull brown life, Vince. The other half of the world.

—WARDHOWARDHOWARDHOWARDHOWARDHOW—

Howard stuck out his mind.

Something stuck out back.

 

Howard woke, cranky and damp. It felt like his mustache had been glued to his lip. He groaned and stretched with all the slow intent of a continent shift. Finally, he smacked his lips and opened his eyes.

Bright light streamed in, forcing them shut like crabs scuttling before a wave. Good _God_ , who had made the morning so bright?

He decided to stretch, get blood moving in his limbs. Maybe in the time it took for his arm to wake up, the sun would be down already. He shifted, trying to dislodge the weight from it. The weight persisted. He tried again. The weight groaned. Finally, Howard decided to risk opening his eyes. He worked his way up from a squint to a bloodshot stare.

Vince stirred, snorting a few times and rubbing sleep from his eyes with his fingertips.

“Alright Howard?” he asked.

Howard snorted crabbily. “Alright, Vince. Could you get your bonce off my arm?” he said, and then burst into tears.

 

“...look, it wasn't the curry, alright?” They were three hours into their shift, and Howard didn't think he'd ever live it down. Vince was jabby, but his joking hid his concern.

“I'm just saying, there'll be no shame in admitting you started a chick flick marathon when I nodded off.” Vince peeled gummy worms off a wad the size of his fist and slurped them down with gusto.

“For the last time, _art film_ does not equal _chick flick_ , and second–”

“Eh-ehm.”

The stranger in the fez and bowtie stood at sharp attention, smiling tightly. Vince yelped, dropping his bag.

“Good God, man, you ever heard of knocking?”

The stranger tilted his head puzzledly. Then he made a fist and rapped three times on the counter.

“Yes?” Howard asked testily.

The stranger said, “I would like to purchase this.”

Vince made a sound like a panda in heat. “You're not getting rid of that?”

Howard rolled his eyes. “Vince, we've been over this. The existence of the Bay City Rollers is an affront to the Geneva convention.”

“But it's a kitsch classic!” Vince cradled the tape in his hands.

“So's _Herbie Goes Bananas._ ” Howard grumbled. Vince dropped the object.

“You haven't been after my videos, have you?”

While he dashed off, the stranger leaned over, oddly oblivious to their exchange.

“How much?”

“Mate, I’ll pay _you_ to take it off my hands,” Howard said.

The stranger dropped a few coins on the counter. “Here. Buy your friend something shiny.”

Howard nodded briskly as he swept the coins toward his open palm.

The stranger turned to leave.

“See you later, Howard.”

“Okay bye, thanks,” Howard said absently as he sorted the coins into the till. It wasn't until around tea that he realized that he had never told the stranger his name. Then Vince tried eating toast and jaffa cake at the same time and Howard had to pound him on the back and the thought fled. Oh well, if he couldn't remember it probably wasn't too important.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, I have to wrap this up before I burst into tears. My thanks for those of you who read and commented, or just read, or just farted in my general direction. Grazie molto.


End file.
